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Mothers on death row

Though more than 200 women kill their children in the United States each year, very few women enter the capital murder system, and fewer still are ever actually executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The following are mothers who took the lives of their own children and were given the death penalty.

In 1990, Ana Marie Cardona, then 39, beat her 3-year-old son to death with a baseball bat after having tortured him for most of his life. Prosecutors said Cardona blamed the boy for her ending up penniless after squandering an estate left to her by her murdered drug-dealing boyfriend.

Idaho - In 1992, Robin Lee Row, then 35, turned off a smoke alarm and set fire to her home, killing her husband, her son, 10, and her daughter, 8, to try to get life insurance benefits.

California- In 1994, Dora Luz Buenrostro, then 34, stabbed her two daughters, 4 and 9, and her son, 8, to death. She planned the killings to hurt her husband and then tried to frame him, prosecutors said.

Texas - In 1996, Darlie Lynn Routier, then 26, was believed to have fatally stabbed her sons, 7 and 5, though she was only tried and convicted in the death of the 5-year-old. She had a stab wound to her neck that prosecutors say was self-inflicted.

California - In 1997, after a day of drinking and taking drugs and an argument with her boyfriend, Susan Eubanks, then 33, shot and killed her sons, ages 4, 6, 7 and 14, before shooting herself in the stomach.

Pennsylvania - In 1998, Michelle Sue Tharp, then 29, starved her 7-year-old daughter to death and then dumped the child's body and reported her missing.

California - In 1998, Sandi Dawn Nieves, then 34, killed her four daughters, ages 5, 7, 11, and 12, by setting fire to their home as revenge against her two ex-husbands and an ex-boyfriend. A son from her first marriage survived and testified against her.

Alabama - In 1999, Patricia Blackmon, then 29, beat her 28-month old adopted daughter Dominiqua to death, leaving her with multiple skull fractures, broken bones and a foot imprint on her chest.

California - In 1999, after a fight with her husband, Caro Socorro, then 42, shot her sons, 11, 8 and 5, while they slept in their $1-millon Santa Rosa Valley home. A fourth infant son was unharmed. Socorro shot herself in the head but survived.

Alabama- In 2004, Tierra Capri Gobble, then 21, beat her 4-month-old son to death because he wouldn't stop crying. The baby had been put in protective custody and Gobble was not supposed to see him.

Alabama - In 2007, Christie Michelle Scott, 30, set fire to the bedroom of her 6-year-old autistic son, the day after taking out a $100,000 life insurance policy on him.

California - In 2007, Manling Tsang Williams, then 28, smothered her sons, 3 and 7, with a pillow and slashed her husband with a sword 97 times. Prosecutors said Williams wanted to start a new relationship without the hindrances of having a family.

Texas - In 2007, Melissa Elizabeth Lucio, then 38, beat and tortured her 2-year-old daughter for months before the toddler died from brain damage in a final violent assault. Lucio said her daughter was injured in a fall down stairs, but ER doctors found bite marks on the toddler's back, a previously broken arm and hair that had been pulled out by the roots.

Women account for 1 in 10 murder arrests, but only about 2 percent of the inmates on death row are women, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Few women have been executed for killing their children in the modern death penalty era.

Rhonda Bell Martin, confessed when she was 40 to having poisoned three of her children, her mother and two of her husbands. Her fifth husband survived poisoning, but was left paraplegic. She was executed in 1957.

Christina Riggs killed her two children in 1998 before trying to kill herself. She was executed in in 2000.

Frances Newton, 40, killed her children, 22 months and 7, and her husband for insurance money. She was executed in Texas in 2005.

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